Sharks wage war on undersea internet cables

There are many, many things that can go wrong as you lay
thousands of miles of fibre optic cable along the ocean's floor.
Earthquakes can rip things up, as can fishing hooks. But now we
know of a new threat: Shark attacks.

According to Network World, Google Product Manager Dan Belcher
told folks at a Google marketing event in Boston last week that
Google ensures its cable is sheathed in a Kevlar-like protective
coating to keep the sharks from chomping through the line. Turns
out this is standard operating procedure among undersea
cable-layers, who must take a number of steps to keep aquatic life
from harming (or being harmed by) data cables.

We asked Google about this, and if they have any idea why sharks
would want to eat fibre optic cables, but they had nothing to say.
But apparently it's a thing, as you can see in the video below.

As Google expands its online empire, undersea cables are
becoming an increasingly important part of the plan. The company
has invested in two major undersea cables connecting the western US
to Asia, and a third cable that extends Google's network within
Asia. That's where the big data bottleneck is these days, and a
lack of fibre connectivity can push up market prices for moving
data between the two continents. That is unless, like Google, you
have access to your very own cables.

We've long known squirrels are a major problem to anyone laying
cable, but according
to a report by the International Cable Protection Committee
cable bites -- by sharks and other fish -- remain a surprisingly
persistent problem. In the 1980s, a deep-ocean fibre optic cable
was cut four times. Researchers blame crocodile sharks for those
attacks after finding teeth in the cable.

The cable protection folks really have no idea why sharks bite
cables either, although some suggest it may be due to "electro
magnetic fields from a suspended cable strumming in currents," they
say in their report.

Sharks, like other animals, can detect magnetic fields -- and
they have miniature volt sensors in their mouths that they use to
detect prey and mates. But there's a simpler explanation, says
Chris Lowe, the professor who runs California State University,
Long Beach's, Shark
Lab. They may simply be curious. "If you had just a piece of
plastic out there shaped like a cable, there's a good chance they'd
bite that too." But even an exploratory nibble is enough to cause
some serious trouble. "Just a little bite is enough to get through
the jacket, damage the fibres and then you're screwed," Lowe
says.

More recently, Level 3 Communications technicians did come
across a three foot long shark in a trench near its fibre cable --
two miles inland -- in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Maybe it
was looking for a bite.